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Re: Replacement for Smart Control Center (SCC) replacement

HTM
Aspirant
Aspirant

Replacement for Smart Control Center (SCC) replacement

I have decent collection of these switches in use (among others) and recently discovered that the Smart Control Center (SCC) software has completely stopped working. It starts, but it will not attach to the PC adapter after clicking apply and restarting. It will not discover anything. Its basically useless. And of course I went to the Netgear web site to look for an update and found that the software is EOL.

 

How do I detect the switches on my LAN?  What is the replacement approach to deal with this. Gonna be expensive to replace more than 15 Netgear managed swtiches with another brand, but I will be doing just that in the not too distant furture if this cant get solved. 

 

Has anyone found the fix for mananging these switches?

 

 

Model: GS724Tv3|24 ports ProSafe Gigabit Smart switch
Message 1 of 4
schumaku
Guru

Re: Replacement for Smart Control Center (SCC) replacement


@HTM wrote:

It will not discover anything. Its basically useless. And of course I went to the Netgear web site to look for an update and found that the software is EOL.


The Smart Control Center (SCC) does date from a design introduced over two decades ago, it was designed for the discovery and management of switches without any other user interface.

 

The technology used for the implementation is phased out and no longer supported by the vendor since January 2021.

 


@HTM wrote:

How do I detect the switches on my LAN?  What is the replacement approach to deal with this


  • NETGEAR Switch Discovery Tool (NSDT) - it's available for Apple MacOS, Windows, and Linux systems.
  • the Insight App (iOS, iPadOS, Android) can discover switches, and
  • Bonjour (most newer switch models offer this, blame Apple for having removed it from the Safari Bookmarks, look into https://bonjourbrowser.com/ for a Safari plugin or standalone for MacOS)
  • UPnP SSDP discovery so Windows Explorer does nicely list all your switches
  • Routers offer the ability for MAC-IP reservations so the switch will always have the same IPv4 address, better ones offer local DNS so you could assign unique names to be used eg. in the Web browser URL
  • Last but not least, more and more newer switches are added to be cloud / Insight managed.

Needless to say, this requires the system or mobile ot be connected to the management network (just like SCC).

 

How much more options do you need? It's absolutely leading edge what Netgear offers on this subject!

 


@HTM wrote:

Gonna be expensive to replace more than 15 Netgear managed swtiches with another brand, but I will be doing just that in the not too distant furture if this cant get solved. 


The tagged GS724Tv3 has like all decent Netgear switches a fully working Web UI.

 

Leaving the cloud-only-managed vendors aside which obviously need certain discovery processes for the initial set-up, I'm not awre which other vendor does support that many discovery options as Netgear does.

 


@HTM wrote:

Has anyone found the fix for mananging these switches?


The tagged GS724Tv3 has like all decent Netgear switches a fully working Web UI, and all except the Smart Managed Plus are supporting SNMP as an industry standard.

 

 

Message 2 of 4
HTM
Aspirant
Aspirant

Re: Replacement for Smart Control Center (SCC) replacement

That was a great reply and left me very hopeful of a centerally managed solution again for all these Netgear switches. Unfortunately the app did not work one bit. It search and searched but could not even find the swith that PC it was running on is connected to. 

The switches are all running the newest firmware as listed on the web site for each switch, and I am aware of the web GUI for accessing each one. It is primarily the centerally managed feature and ability to check the firmware version of all of them at one time that is most helpful.

I have long been a fan of Netgear, but this is not the first device\app of Netgear's that has failed me. I ahve had switches and routers that dont auto update, and in some instances when a firmware update is applied the device reverts to its default factory state. I have been using this gear a long time, had great success with a bridge application years back. But the failure of having clean and simple migration paths through the eco system is unforgivingly brutal. I have tried to load three different app solutions jsut to solve this detection issue and none work. One reports no switches found, one will not connect the active PC adapter, adn the other reports an HTTP error. I even tried to open inbound and outbound UDP ports on the PC firewall as suggested, still no luck.

 

NETGEAR_Switch_Discovery_Tool_Windows-V1.2.103 - Doesn't work

ProSAFE_Plus_Utility_V2.7.8  -  Doesn't work

Smart Control Center -Release-V1.1.3.4   -  Doesnt work

 

Worse part of all of this, is the lack of information provided to trouble shoot the matter, other than the read me Known Isses:

 

Known Issues:

  • Your switch might not show in the network list in the Plus Configuration Utility. Workaround: Click the REFRESH button or close and launch the ProSAFE Plus Utility again. You might also need to configure your computer’s security software to allow broadcast packets to pass through (to/from) your PC’s UDP ports 63321-63324. To allow this traffic, you can create a rule in your computer’s security software, or temporarily disable the firewall, antivirus programs, or all of these on the computer. If you temporarily disable any security services, be sure to reenable these services when the firmware upgrade is completed.

 

 

I will remain open and continue to hope for a more effective solution, but my projects are grinding to a hault becuase of these limitations.

 

 

 

 

 

Model: GS108Tv2|ProSafe 8 ports gigabit smart switch, GS724Tv3|24 ports ProSafe Gigabit Smart switch
Message 3 of 4
HTM
Aspirant
Aspirant

Re: Replacement for Smart Control Center (SCC) replacement

 
 
 
 
 
 

So all of the discovery solutions you listed do not work. They might on newer Netgear devices, but the issue was not only discovery but also centralized management.

 

NSDT does not detect any of the switches on the network, so this was a bust. I had high hopes and might try to figure out why, but there isnt much to work with message or error wise without adding sniffers and packet analizers to see what the app is doing over the wire.

 

These are newer switches so Bonjour is no help.

 

Still looking for Netgear solution to centrally manage Netgear (Managed) swtiches, a bit like Ubiquti, Cisco, HP, Adtran, Dell and other large enterprise devices can all do.

 

 

 

Model: GS724Tv3|24 ports ProSafe Gigabit Smart switch
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